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The Space Race

dorsetknob

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Second stage is de orbited and returned to earth It burns up in atmosphere
 

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The first step on the journey to Mars......a preview video from CES




SLS will stand 322ft (98 metres) tall, provide 8.4 million pounds of thrust at lift-off, weigh 5.5 million pounds.

It will also carry 70 metric tons or 154,000 pounds of payload.
To get off the ground, Block 1 requires twin solid rocket boosters, powerful engines, flight computers, avionics and the core stage.

The core stage, towering more than 200 feet tall with a diameter of 27.6 feet, will carry cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that will feed the vehicle's four RS-25 engines.



 

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January 17th

Technology entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX will attempt to land its next Falcon 9 rocket on a barge in the Pacific Ocean, seeking another milestone a month after landing a booster on the ground in a spaceflight first..

The Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a NASA ocean-monitoring satellite, is set to blast off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Jan. 17.

About two minutes after liftoff, the first stage of the rocket will separate, flip around, fire engines to slow its fall, deploy landing legs and attempt to touch down on a floating landing pad in the Pacific Ocean.


EPIC FOOTAGE of the first success
 

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The space agency's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has finally found the crater created by the impact of the Apollo 16 mission's S-IVB rocket stage back in April 1972, NASA officials announced last month.

The impact crater, which is about 130 feet (40 meters) wide, lies on the moon's Mare Insularum, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) southwest of Copernicus Crater, one of the most famous and prominent features on the lunar near side, said team members with LRO's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC).



The spot is just south of Mare Imbrium, the large circular dark area first visible when the moon waxes to about half-full. (A mare is a dark basaltic plain on the moon caused by long-ago volcanic eruptions.)

The S-IVB was the third stage of NASA's huge Saturn V rocket, which blasted the Apollo astronauts to the moon. Beginning with the Apollo 13 mission in 1970, S-IVBs were sent to impact the lunar surface. Earlier Apollo missions had placed seismometers on the moon, allowing scientists to study the object's interior structure when the leftover rocket stages hit.

The S-IVBs' impact sites were estimated from old tracking data. LRO, which has been circling the moon since 2009, had previously found the spots where the booster stages used with the Apollo 13, 14, 15 and 17 missions had landed.

But nobody was quite sure where Apollo 16's S-IVB fell, because contact with the stage was lost for a short time when it was on its way down. As it happened, the actual impact site was off by about 19 miles (30 km) from the place where tracking systems of the day predicted it would be, LROC team members said.


Two images showing the impact site of the Apollo 16 mission's S-IVB rocket stage, which hit the lunar surface in April 1972. Each image shows a swathe of the moon 1,300 feet (400 meters) wide; north is up.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University


Craters caused by S-IVB crashes are much shallower than the holes gouged out by asteroids and comets.

"The craters from the booster impacts are unusual because they are formed by very low-density projectiles traveling at relatively low velocity (2.6 km per second; 5,800 mph)," LROC team members wrote in a description of the Apollo 16 S-IVB discovery images.

"The S-IVB booster can be imagined as an empty soda can hitting the surface — just an outer metal shell with very little interior mass (all of the fuel was used to send the astronauts toward the moon and the tanks were empty)," they added. "During the impact, much of the energy went into crushing the booster, and only a shallow crater was formed."






 
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Space Missions to Watch in 2016

Jan. 17: Launch of Jason-3 Earth-observing satellite
On Sunday (Jan. 17), the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Jason-3 satellite is scheduled to launch to Earth orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.




Feb. 7: SpaceX's return-to-flight cargo mission
SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to fly at least 12 robotic resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) using the Falcon 9 and the company's uncrewed Dragon capsule. The first six such flights went perfectly, but the seventh ended just minutes after liftoff on June 28, 2015, when the Falcon 9 broke apart in the Florida skies.
upload_2016-1-13_8-15-7.jpeg



March 14: Launch One for Europe's ExoMars mission
The European Space Agency (ESA) is scheduled to launch the first part of its ExoMars mission on March 14, blasting the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on a seventh-month journey toward the Red Planet along with a technology-demonstrating lander



March 18: Astronauts launch toward International Space Station
NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams and cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka are slated to launch toward the ISS on March 18. The trio will blast off in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

April: Maiden launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket
At some point in April, SpaceX plans to launch its huge Falcon Heavy rocketfor the first time, with the liftoff taking place from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The 224-foot-tall (68 meters) Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful booster in the world when it's operational, capable of lofting 53 metric tons to low Earth orbit, SpaceX representatives say.



Summer: End of NASA's Dawn mission?
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has been orbiting Ceres since March 2015, studying the heavily cratered dwarf planet's mysterious bright spots and other intriguing features. Last month, Dawn finished spiraling down to its final science orbit, and is now taking pictures and making measurements from an altitude of just 230 miles (375 km).
upload_2016-1-13_8-17-17.jpeg



July 4: Juno arrives at Jupiter
NASA's Juno spacecraft is scheduled to enter orbit around Jupiter on July 4, nearly five years after the probe blasted off.
The solar-powered Juno will map out Jupiter's magnetic and gravitational fields precisely, revealing key details about the giant planet's evolution and structure — including whether or not it has a solid core, NASA officials have said.
upload_2016-1-13_8-18-6.jpeg



Sept. 3: NASA asteroid-sampling probe blasts off
Another NASA spaceflight milestone comes on Sept. 3, with the scheduled launch of the agency's Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer mission, or OSIRIS-REx for short.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will head toward a 1,650-foot-wide (500 m) asteroid named Bennu, and, if everything goes according to plan, will arrive at the potentially hazardous space rock in 2018. OSIRIS-REx will snag at least 2.1 ounces (60 grams) of Bennu material and bring the sample back to Earth in 2023.
upload_2016-1-13_8-18-53.jpeg



Sept. 30: Historic Rosetta comet mission ends
The first mission ever to orbit and land on a comet will wrap up on Sept. 30, when ESA's Rosetta spacecraft spirals down onto the surface of the 2.5 mile-wide (4 km) Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
upload_2016-1-13_8-19-21.jpeg



Late 2016: Europe's satellite-navigation system up and running
Europe's own version of the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS) should be operational by the end of the year, ESA officials say.

Four more spacecraft for Europe's Galileo satellite-navigation network are slated to launch this year, allowing the system to start providing initial services sometime in 2016. Galileo, which is civilian-run (in contrast to the military-run GPS network) will eventually consist of 30 Earth-orbiting satellites — 24 operational spacecraft, plus six spares. Twelve Galileo satellites have been launched to date.
upload_2016-1-13_8-19-54.jpeg







All year: Testing of future crewed spaceships
This year, engineers and technicians will continue to develop and test a variety of spacecraft designed to help humanity explore the final frontier.

Suborbital vehicles such as Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, XCOR Aerospace's Lynx rocket plane and Blue Origin's New Shepard system will be put through their paces, as will orbital craft such as Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser space plane, SpaceX's Dragon V2 capsule and Boeing's CST-100 Starliner capsule.

Indeed, SpaceX and Boeing are working to get Dragon V2 (which is an advanced version of the company's robotic Dragon cargo capsule) and Starliner ready to carry NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station beginning in 2017; Dragon V2 may make its maiden flight, an uncrewed test, before 2016 is done. (In September 2014, the space agency awarded SpaceX and Boeing $2.6 billion and $4.2 billion, respectively, to get the two capsules ready to fly.)

And NASA will continue developing its Orion crew capsule, which will help get agency astronauts to deep-space destinations such as asteroids and, eventually, Mars. (SpaceX has also said Dragon could journey to Mars, as well as a variety of other destinations throughout the solar system.)
 

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The U.S. Air Force said Jan. 13 it has chosen to invest up to $241 million in rocket propulsion systems Orbital ATK and SpaceX pitched as a way to end Air Force dependence the Russian-built rocket engine it uses to launch most U.S. national security payloads.


A Blue Origin's BE-3 engine undergoes testing at the company's West Texas facility in 2013. Credit: Blue Origin

Orbital ATK won the biggest share of the money awarded Jan. 13. The Dulles, Virginia-based company stands to receive at least $46.9 million, and perhaps as much as $180 million, to develop three rocket propulsion system prototypes intended for use on an Orbital ATK next-generation launch vehicle.
Specifically, Orbital ATK
https://www.orbitalatk.com/
will combine the Air Force money with at least $31 million, and as much as $124 million, of its own to develop the GEM 63XL strap-on solid rocket motor, the Common Booster Segment solid rocket motor, and an extendable nozzle for Blue Origin’s BE-3U upper stage engine.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite-Epoxy_Motor





SpaceX, meanwhile, will get at least $33.6 million, and perhaps as much as $61 million, to continue development of its methane-fueled Raptor engine. SpaceX is expected to match the Air Force’s investment in Raptor with at least $67 million, and as much as $123 million, according to the Air Force contract announcement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_rocket_engine_family


Raptor



The Air Force is under pressure to end its dependence on the RD-180, the Russian-built engine that powers the main stage of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket.






 
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A 'space shurttle' design has been selected by Nasa as the third private craft to carry out cargo missions to the International Space Station.
On Thursday, Nasa announced Sierra Nevada Corp. will join SpaceX and Orbital ATK in launching cargo to the International Space Station.
These flights, yet to be finalized, will run through 2024, and marks a second chance for the Nevada-based company, which is developing a mini shuttle called Dream Chaser.









How the Dream chaser Will work: Each craft can be reused 15 times.






First (almost) successful freefall landing.




UK astronaut Tim Peake will take a walk in space today. Scheduled for 12.55 GMT and due to last more than six hours, the spacewalk calls for Peake and his Nasa partner Tim Kopra to traverse nearly the entire length of the space station to replace a broken power unit, fit a new valve, and lay tens of metres of cable.




LIVE COVERAGE
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/
 
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First flower grown in space


Revealed today by U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly, who is currently completing the first full year in space, the flower is an edible zinnia - which can be used in salads.






The flowers were grown inside the Veggie lab aboard ISS which was installed in early May 2014.
While the ISS crew had previously raised two crops of romaine lettuce and arugula, the zinnias were the first flowering plants grown in space.
Explaining the significance of successfully growing a plant, Veggie project manager Trent Smith said: 'The zinnia plant is very different from lettuce.




'It is more sensitive to environmental parameters and light characteristics. It has a longer growth duration between 60 and 80 days.
'Thus, it is a more difficult plant to grow, and allowing it to flower, along with the longer growth duration, makes it a good precursor to a tomato plant.'




Other plants, such as squash (pictured) have also been grown aboard the ISS, though no other plants have flowered while in space




The Veggie garden was installed on the ISS in May 2014, and will soon be used to grow further crops of lettuce before tomatoes are planted in 2018.


Following the success of the zinnia flowers, another crop of romaine lettuce will be grown alongside Chinese cabbage, followed by dwarf tomatoes in 2018.
Growing the tomato plants will be a crucial stage for NASA and its aims of traveling to Mars, as such long missions will likely require astronauts to produce food without contact with Earth.



 

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SpaceX's latest attempt to land its reusable Falcon 9 rocket on a ship in the ocean failed again tonight, but it was a close call — an issue with one of the rocket's leg-locking mechanisms caused it to tip over after landing, bringing the test to a fiery end. Elon Musk just posted a dramatic video to Instagram that shows the incident up close in footage recorded from the platform; it's worth watching as a demonstration of just how precise the landing needs to be.
"Falcon lands on droneship, but the lockout collet doesn't latch on one [of] the four legs, causing it to tip over post-landing," Musk says. "[The] root cause may have been ice buildup due to condensation from heavy fog at liftoff."
Although this was another failure, SpaceX does appear to be making progress toward its goals. The company launched and landed the Falcon 9 on solid ground last month, in a historic landing that hints at a less expensive future for commercial space flight.

SpaceX successfully launched a new satellite into orbit to map Earth's oceans today (Jan. 17), but the spaceflight company's bold plan to land a rocket on a robotic ship at sea after the liftoff came up just short, narrowly missing a successful touchdown.

VIDEO
http://www.space.com/31649-spacex-r...ch.html#ooid=JtNjU5MDE6pwim5VIutRoLSQOqRNDoke




The first stage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket managed to reach its landing target, an "autonomous spaceport droneship" called "Just Read the Instructions," but toppled over on the deck, company representatives said. The touchdown attempt came during the successful launch of the Jason-3 ocean-monitoring satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California — the primary objective of today's activities.

"Unfortunately, we are not standing upright on the droneship at the moment, but the good news is that the primary mission is still on track," SpaceX lead mechanical design engineer John Federspiel said during the company's launch webcast today. [See photos of SpaceX's Jason-3 Satellite Launch on a Falcon 9]
"First stage on target at droneship but looks like hard landing; broke landing leg. Primary mission remains nominal," SpaceX representatives said via the company's Twitter account, @SpaceX. "After further data review, stage landed softly but leg 3 didn't lockout. Was within 1.3 meters of droneship center," they added in a later tweet.


The first stage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is seen here lying on its side on the drone ship "Just Read the Instructions" after a near-miss landing attempt on Jan. 17, 2016.
Credit: Elon Musk Twitter
View full size image

 
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India launches.


An Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) was successfully launched on Wednesday, Jan. 20, carrying the fifth spacecraft for the country’s indigenous Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS). Liftoff took place as planned at 9:31 a.m. IST, 04:01 GMT, 11:01 p.m. EST (Jan. 19) from the Second Launch Pad (SLP) at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), located in Sriharikota, India




This is the fifth one of the constellation of seven satellites of IRNSS
PSLV-C31 successfully put into orbit IRNSS-1E, the fifth satellite of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) after its succesful launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), SHAR, Sriharikota, on Wednesday morning.
PSLV-C31 for the eleventh time used ‘XL’ version of PSLV.
IRNSS-1E, with a liftoff mass of 1425 kg, carried navigation payload and ranging payload, according to an ISRO release.
Some 19 minutes after it lifted off from Second Launch Pad of the SDSC at 9.31 am,, PSLV-C31 placed the satellite in precise orbit.
"PSLV C-31 rocket has successfully launched IRNSS-IE satellite in orbit," ISRO chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar said.











The IRNSS-1E spacecraft being integrated with the PSLV-C31 launch vehicle. Image Credit: ISRO
 

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Who wants to see something ACE ?



BLUE ORIGIN does it again



"The very same New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse," the businessman said.
"This time, New Shepard reached an apogee of 333,582ft (101.7km) before both capsule and booster gently returned to Earth for recovery and reuse."
One hundred kilometres is regarded as the official boundary of space. New Shepard does not achieve the velocities that would allow the system to make orbit and stay up, but Mr Bezos says his Blue Origin space company is working on a family of rockets that would make this possible.




 

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NASA’s Juno spacecraft bound for a rendezvous with Jupiter in July has set a record as the most distant solar-powered space probe ever flown.


Technicians work on one of the Juno spacecraft’s three solar panels before launch. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/KSC


Juno broke the record previously held by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft Jan. 13 as it flew about 493 million miles (793 million kilometers) from the sun, NASA said in a press release announcing the milestone.

When it enters orbit around Jupiter on July 4, the Juno spacecraft will become the first solar-powered mission to reach the gas giant, beginning 20 months of commissioning and science observations aimed at studying the structure of the planet’s interior and atmosphere.

Juno carries three large solar panels, each one 9 feet wide and 29 feet long, to generate electricity.
Shortly after the mission’s launch in 2011, the solar power system could convert sunlight into 14 kilowatts of energy. When Juno reaches Jupiter, which orbits five times farther from the sun than Earth, the spacecraft must operate on 500 watts.

Half of Juno’s electricity budget goes to its thermal system to keep the spacecraft at a comfortable temperature. The balance goes toward communications, computers, propulsion and operating the probe’s seven scientific instruments and color camera.

All eight probes that previously explored the realm of the solar system now occupied by Juno relied on nuclear power sources, but the U.S. government’s stockpile of space-grade plutonium was diminishing when engineers designed Juno, prompting a decision to build three huge solar panels for the spacecraft.
Juno’s solar panels are arranged in a triangular shape in space. All together, the panels have an area of about 635 square feet, ISS has a total of about 27,000 sq feet.

Juno’s solar panels consist of 18,698 individual cells, each measuring approximately 3.7 inches by 2.25 inches. The rectangular cells are made of silicon and gallium arsenide.



Artists impression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)
 

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Yesterday marked the 30 th anniversary Of the Challenger disaster.

In Memory....Heroes.

Front row from left are Michael J. Smith, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, and Ronald E. McNair. Back row from left are Ellison Onizuka, school teacher Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik

 

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Nasa workers handled a special delivery as the massive Super Guppy aircraft opened to reveal the smaller - but equally precious - Orion capsule.
The Super Guppy, which landed on Monday at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, enables Nasa to fly spacecraft components around the world.
This time, the jumbo plane, with a 156 feet wingspan, was carrying the Orion space crew module, destined to fly at the top of the Space Launch System (SLS).
By the time it is completed in 2018, the SLS will be the biggest and most powerful rocket in the world and will be capable of sending humans to Mars.




Its cargo compartment is 25 feet tall, 25 feet wide and 111 feet long, and can carry more than 26 tons





Orion (pictured inside the Super Guppy) is set to go on an uncrewed test flight beyond the moon in 2018. The capsule will travel for about three weeks, taking off from the Kennedy Space Center and touching down off the San Diego coast in the Pacific Ocean






Nasa plans to send astronauts on a first crewed flight aboard Orion in 2021. Then, the space crew module will be used for other missions in the 2020s.
Ultimately, Nasa hopes that a journey to Mars will be within reach in the 2030s.

Monday's delivery brought Orion's underlying structure, also known as the pressure vessel, to the Kennedy Space Center.
The pressure vessel was first assembled in Nasa's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. It took about four months for technicians to build it from seven large aluminum pieces.


The structure will fly on top of the SLS for a first uncrewed test flight in 2018. The flight, dubbed Exploration Mission-1, is meant to enable Nasa to test the spacecraft's ability to accomplish future missions into deep space.
It will be a three-week journey beyond the moon.
SLS and Orion will take off from Nasa's Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center. Orion will leave Earth's orbit and travel in the direction of the moon for several days.
The capsule will then orbit around the moon for about six days before traveling back to Earth. It will return to the atmosphere at 25,000 mph, reaching temperatures as high as 5,000 degrees Farenheit.
Nasa expects Orion to touch down off the San Diego coast in the Pacific Ocean.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_Mission_1



SLS Space Launch System.

 

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Orion will undergo proof-pressure testing where the structural welds are stress tested to confirm it can withstand the environments it will experience in space. The team will then use phased array technology to inspect the welds to make sure there are no defects. Additional structural tests will follow including proof-pressure testing of the fluid system welds followed by x-ray inspections




With almost exactly 42 years between the last Apollo mission, Apollo 17, which launched on 7 December 1972, and the first flight of Orion, the technology has moved on considerably.
On the surface the two space capsules look the same - they are cone-shaped, and have a large heat shield to protect the astronauts from the intense conditions during re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere.





The heat shield will use a new material called AVCOAT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCOAT

http://www.textronsystems.com/capabilities/missile-space/thermal
 
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Not really space race this time around, I'd call it knowledge race:

LISA Pathfinder will test key technologies for space-based observation of gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of spacetime that are predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.

4K liftoff timelapse

 

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More epic Blue Origin footage


The rocket hit an altitude of 333,582 feet (63 miles) before 'gently' returning to Earth in west Texas



Blue Origin
 
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Not as interesting as @CAPSLOCKSTUCK posted stuff but space related anyway:


On 15 January ESA astronaut Tim Peake and NASA astronaut Tim Kopra stepped outside of the International Space Station to replace a failed power regulator and install cabling.

 

CAPSLOCKSTUCK

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Happy Birthday to this thread......:peace:




:lovetpu:
 
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^ congrats!


My pants are little bit wet now because ....


Black hole enthusiasts, galaxy cluster aficionados, and X-ray astronomers have much to be excited about. On Friday, Feb. 12, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will be launching their sixth satellite dedicated to X-ray astronomy, ASTRO-H, from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima, Japan. The observatory carries a state-of-the-art instrument and two telescope mirrors built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

ASTRO-H is expected to provide breakthroughs in a wide variety of high-energy phenomena in the cosmos, ranging from the superheated material on the brink of falling into a black hole to the evolution of vast galaxy clusters. It is equipped with four advanced instruments covering a broad energy range, from low-energy, or "soft," X-rays around 300 eV to soft gamma rays up to 600 keV. For comparison, the energy of visible light spans about 2-3 eV.





 

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@Drone i try and watch every launch, here is a link to this one.

 

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The next commercial cargo mission to the International Space Station is being delayed by mold. -





The agency decided to disinfect every bag as a precaution, including those that had already been stowed inside the Cygnus.
That work will push back the mission, previously set for launch on an Atlas 5 for March 10, to March 22. The source of the mold wasn't clear.
-

The International Space Station's robotic arm prepares to grapple the Cygnus cargo spacecraft as it arrives at the station Dec. 9, in this image taken by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly.
Credit: NASA -
 

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Launch of ASTRA -H (delayed) scroll to 33 min for launch

 
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